It’s Expensive to Be a Professional

For anyone trying to climb the social ladder, it’s quite THE investment. At least it’s an investment in yourself right? So yesterday I went to take one part of a test in my profession and saw this morning that I passed. I passed! It feels so good and uplifting to get good news because work life has been super demanding, and my mental health was taking a nose dive from all the pressure. It also didn’t help that I failed this test the first time around and I guess I’ve been hung up on it ever since. So to better prepare the second time around, I pretty much bought a lot of recommended study material and a practice book. It worked but let me just say that it wasn’t cheap and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any cheaper. Now that I know I need to read more content, at least the parts of my profession I don’t do everyday, I have to pick up quite a bit of study material. Lucky for me I have a great boss who reimburses the cost of testing if passed and also reimburses for study material.

For those not so fortunate, it gets expensive right? I mean it definitely adds up. For those in the medical field especially those testing to be doctors, optometrists, or pharmacists I don’t think they get reimbursed for their testing. Even for lawyers I’m not so sure that’s how it works either. I can’t even quantify the amount of school, money, and time people put into these professions. For those less fortunate who dream a bigger dream, the student loan burden must be hard to deal with. The loans eventually get paid off, but still the anxiety from such a large loan amount must be crazy. I think people don’t think about these things when they’re in college. Even for myself I didn’t think about repaying my loan until after I graduated. It was only after finishing when I realized how much borrowing sucks, and how much less I could’ve borrowed. But I digress. The amount of money poured into a person’s profession doesn’t stop after college. There’s fee associations to pay into, license fees, and cost of study materials. Then throw all of this into a person’s life and suddenly it get’s expensive, because let’s face it, having a social life is not cheap either. There are baby showers to go to, weddings to attend, and other things in life that deserve our money more than association or license fees.